Big quacka spend 18.5 times more on marketing than research, big pharma only twice as much
Posted by gimpy on January 4, 2008
JDC has an interesting post up comparing the marketing costs with R&D for big pharma. Almost twice as much it seems which is ample reason to criticise big pharma. However JDC also asks
I wonder what the ratio of R&D:Marketing would be for, say, homeopathy?
a question he doesn’t answer. Well lucky for him and all you homeopaths out there I can tell you how much Boiron, a huge French homeopathy company, spend.
Taken from the 2007 half year report the answer is staggering.
Marketing costs amounted to €47,124,000 in the first 6 months of 2007
Research costs amounted to €2,548,000 in the first 6 months of 2007
So Boiron spend ~18.5 times as much on advertising as they do on research. Fuck me. And we criticise big pharma for spending nearly twice as much on marketing.
wilsontown said
Like the epithet ‘big quacka’. Fighting fire with fire.
What is almost more worrying than the fact that Boiron spent 18.5 times as much on marketing as research, is the fact that Boiron spent €2.5 million on research. What did they actually do with all that money?
snafflehound said
Why would they need to spend any money at all on research? Hahnemann figured it out and wrote it down 200 years ago, it is received wisdom.
Which makes me wonder, what did they spend 2.5m Euros on?
Andy Lewis said
Writing down anecdotes?
nash said
Maybe a way to attract govt grants or tax-relief.
Andy Lewis said
In all seriousness, note the entry is in financial statement is for R&D costs – research and development – not just research. In my experience companies spend a lot more on ‘D’ (in general) then on ‘R’. And development costs are usually mopped up by refining manufacturing processes. With such a huge manufacturing process, a lot of ‘D’ is going to spent on manufacturing and its associated engineering. A lot of ‘R’ could be spent on things like legal threats to their business. My guess that fundamental research on homeopathy would come out closer to a homeopathic zero. The situation is undoubtedly far worse than you suggest gimpy.
jdc325 said
Good stuff Gimpy. I’ve been trying to find R&D costs versus marketing costs for food supplements. (For some reason, I couldn’t find anything on R&D costs for herbal remedies).
gimpy said
I suspect that R&D costs are so low because there is no obligation on the homeopaths/vitamin pushers to prove that their product works. They are simply taking advantage of a flaw in the system that puts real and necessary brakes on the process of developing pharmaceuticals to ensure efficacy and safety but allows quacks to make grand claims without having to prove them. The aim of any business is to maximise profits, ensure healthy dividends and to continually grow, why inhibit this process and possibly damage your product by testing it when it is not necessary?
Journey through a Burning Mind » Bad Science: How Homeopaths Misrepresent the Evidence said
[...] It is a French company with a yearly sales turnout of more than £200 million. Nevertheless, they only spend around £2.5 million for research and around £47 million goes to marketing (for a ratio of 1:18!). [...]
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Homeo-apatia « Modne Bzdury said
[...] Zapytajmy firmę Boiron, potentata na rynku, który na działania marketingowe wydaje 18,5 raza więcej pieniędzy niż na badania. W swoim oświadczeniu Boiron broni się, że ich produkty są legalne i nikogo nie krzywdzą: Leki [...]
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